The workplace of Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg has facilitated the return of 29 antiquities, collectively valued at $3m, to their rightful residence in Greece. A ceremony was held earlier this month on the Consulate Normal of Greece in New York to mark the event and formally hand over the objects
The artefacts embody items implicated in trafficking networks performed by the smugglers Robin Symes and Eugene Alexander. Symes, a British artwork supplier who died in 2023, fell from grace after a 2016 probe by the Carabinieri, Italy’s specialist artwork investigation squad, revealed him to be the ringleader of a global legal looting syndicate that spanned a long time.
“These 29 extraordinary items have been recovered because of the onerous work of our prosecutors and analysts,” Bragg in a press release. “The impression of those important trafficking networks are nonetheless felt in New York, and we are going to proceed to work alongside our companions across the globe to return stolen objects.”
Notable objects within the repatriated trove embody a sculpture dubbed “Bronze Foot within the Type of a Sphinx”, which truly may depict a siren; it was seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in 2025. Relationship from the 600BC, a trafficker had bought it to Symes, who in flip bought it to a non-public collector who donated it to the Met in 2000.
One other piece, a bronze applique depicting a gorgon and courting from the sixth century BC, was initially hooked up to a bronze vessel. It depicts a operating mythological feminine monster with snakes for hair, most popularly portrayed in modern-day parlance via the story of Medusa. The bronze gorgon was bought by the trafficker Robert Hecht to Fortuna Positive Arts, a gallery that’s presently battling fraud costs in federal courtroom. Fortuna bought the applique to a non-public collector who then loaned the artefact to the Met, the place it was seized by the Manhattan District Lawyer’s workplace’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit earlier this 12 months.
“Every repatriation of Greek antiquities is a profoundly essential occasion, vindicating the Ministry of Tradition’s coverage lately,” Lina Mendoni, the Greek minister of tradition, mentioned in a press release. “Greece is now internationally recognised as a rustic that has positioned the combat towards illicit trafficking of cultural heritage on the forefront of its agenda—a problem instantly linked to organised crime and terrorism.”
Since Bragg took workplace as Manhattan’s District Lawyer firstly of 2022, his workplace’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has recovered almost 2,400 artefacts looted from 47 nations, value a mixed $260m. Earlier this 12 months, his workplace returned eight artefacts to Peruvian authorities and assisted with the repatriation of three sculptural objects to Iraq.
